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---
layout: post
title: Enhancing Printing at Muhlenberg
description: Avoiding frustration and wasted paper by providing remote status reporting and logical DNS names.
category: writing
date: 2014-05-03 00:00:00
redirect_from: "/writing/printing-at-muhlenberg/"
---
A common frustration of Muhlenberg students is to print a document to a dorm printer only to find that the printer had no paper when going to collect it. This leads to both frustration and wasted paper, since when more paper is put into the printer, it will print out all the queued jobs from when the tray was empty. By that time, students have often given up and printed their document to another printer.
To avoid this, I created a web page that [reports the status of Muhlenberg printers](http://mathcs.muhlenberg.edu/~bb246500/printers/). The PHP script queries the printers to determine the status of their trays. If you’d like to see other printers added, let me know [by email](mailto:hi@benburwell.com) or [on Twitter](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=@bburwell).
## DNS Names
To facilitate printing from personal computers, I created DNS records for several printers which enable them to be configured with a logical name rather than by IP address. Currently, the following printers/DNS names are available:
* `trumbower48.print.muhlenberg.benburwell.com`
* `trumbower125.print.muhlenberg.benburwell.com`
* `trumbower147.print.muhlenberg.benburwell.com`
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